POLAND WILL participate in a new US missile defence programme, Donald Tusk, the prime minister, said yesterday after meeting US vice-president Joe Biden.
“The project of a new configuration of missile defence is very interesting. We want to take part,” Mr Tusk said.
The missile defence plan is a replacement for an interceptor system proposed by the Bush administration to defend the US against Iran but abandoned under President Barack Obama.
“We appreciate Poland has stepped up and agreed to host an element of the previous missile defence plan and we now appreciate that Poland’s government agrees with us that there is now a better way,” Mr Biden said.
Warsaw was nonplussed last month when the US administration backed away from the missile defence programme put forward by George W Bush. That plan had called for a missile interceptor base in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic.
Although the plan did not have much public support in either Poland or the Czech Republic, the governments of both countries saw the bases as a way of permanently stationing US troops on their territory, which would have given them additional security against a resurgent Russia.
Moscow had opposed the plan, even threatening to target the installations with nuclear missiles. When Mr Obama took power, his administration rethought the plan, upsetting Prague and Warsaw, which incurred the displeasure of other European Union countries in going forward with missile defence. Adding to Poland’s irritation, the US decision to back away from the Bush programme came on September 17th, the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union.
Mr Biden, who is also visiting Romania and the Czech Republic, is trying to repair some of the damage caused by the defence shield decision. He told Mr Tusk that the US was still committed to Poland’s security and stressed that the new anti-missile system would be better than the old one.